In what must be called the social life of the forecastle, although it is commonly marked by an utter absence of social observances, there are several well-defined rules of etiquette which persist in spite of all other changes. One must not lock his chest at sea. As soon as the last landsman has left the ship, unlock the “donkey,” throw the key ostentatiously into the till, and, letting the lid fall, seat yourself upon it, and light your pipe. It is a Masonic sign of good-fellowship, known and read of all men, that you are a “Sou’ Spainer” indeed, at home again. The first time that the newly assembled crew sit down gipsy fashion to a meal (for tables are seldom supplied), there may be one, usually a boy, who fails to remove his cap. Then does the nearest man’s hand seek the “bread-barge” for a whole biscuit, generally of tile-like texture and consistency. Grasping it by spreading his fingers all over its circumference, the mentor brings it down crushingly upon the covered head of the offender, who is thus initiated, as it were, to the fact that he must “show respect to his grub,” as the term goes. But often when the commons have been exceptionally short or bad an old seaman will deliberately put on his cap again with the remark “’Tain’t wuth it.” If a man wants to smoke while a meal is in progress let him go outside, unless he desires deliberately to raise a storm. And when on the first day of serving out stores a man has been induced to undertake the onerous duty of dividing to each one his weekly portion—“whacking out”—gross indeed must be his carelessness or unfairness before any sufferer will raise a protest. It used to be the practice to load the boys or ordinary seamen (a grade between “A.B.” and boy) with all the menial service of the forecastle, such as food-fetching, washing up utensils, scrubbing, &c. But a juster and wiser plan has been borrowed from the Navy, whereby each man takes in rotation a week as “cook of the mess.” He cooks nothing, the “Doctor” will take care of that, but he is the servant of his house for that week, responsible for its due order and cleanliness. The boys are usually kept out of the forecastle altogether, and berthed with the petty officers, a plan which has with some advantages grave drawbacks. One curious old custom deserves passing notice. Upon a vessel’s arrival in ports where it is necessary to anchor, it is usual to set what is called an “anchor-watch” the first night. All hands take part in this for one hour each, or should do so, but that sometimes there are too few and sometimes too many. As soon as the order is given to “pick for anchor-watch” an old hand draws a rude circle on the deck, which he subdivides into as many sections as there are men. Then one man retires while all the rest come forward and make each man his private mark in a section. When all have contributed, the excluded one (whose mark has been made for him by deputy) is called in and solemnly rubs out mark after mark, the first to be rubbed out giving its owner the first hour’s watch, and so on.
Nothing has been said about etiquette in the Royal Navy, because there it is hardly ever to be distinguished from disciplinary rule. Nor has allusion been more than casually made to steamships, whose routine excludes etiquette, having no more room for it than it has for seamanship, except upon rare occasions.
WAVES
Beloved of the poet and the painter, appealing by the inimitable grace of their curves and marvel of their motion to all mankind, the waves of the sea take easily their high place with the stars and the mountains as some of the chief glories attendant upon the round world. Only an artist, perhaps, could do justice to the multiplicity of lovely lines into which the ruffled surface of the ocean enwreathes itself under the pressure of the storm. Yet any one with an eye for the beautiful will find it hard to leave a sight so fair, will watch unweariedly for hours the gliding, curling masses as they rise, apparently in defiance of law, subside and rise again and yet again.
Sailors often speak of an “ugly” sea, but the adjective has quite another meaning to that usually attached to it. They do not mean that it is ugly in appearance, for they well know that the beauty of a wave is as much a part of it as is the water—it cannot be otherwise than beautiful, as it cannot cease to be wet. What they mean is a dangerous sea. And by “sea” they always mean wave. A sailor never speaks of a “high wave,” “cross waves,” “heavy waves”; in fact, on board ship, except when passengers are getting information from officers, you will not hear the word “wave” mentioned at all. It is necessary to mention this purely nautical detail to save constant explanation and digression. To return, then, to the sailor’s “ugly” sea. Its ugliness may be due to many different causes, but in the result the waves do not run truly with the wind; they rise unexpectedly and confusedly, changing the natural motion of the ship into a bewildered stagger, such as one will sometimes see in a horse when a brutal, foolish driver is beating him over the head and wrenching first at one rein and then the other without knowing himself what he wants the poor brute to do. It is very pitiful, too, to watch a gallant ship being pressed through an ugly, untrue sea—such, for instance, as may be met with in the North Atlantic with a south-west gale blowing, and the vessel in the midst of the Gulf Stream. The conflict between wind and current, all the more terrible for its invisibility, is deep-reaching, so deep that every excuse must be found for those who have spoken of seas running mountains high. As the steady, implacable thrust of the storm booms forth, the black breadths of water rise rebellious; they would fain flow in the face of the wind, but that cannot be. So they rise, sullenly rise, peak-like, against their persecutor, until his might compels them forward against the mighty stream beneath, and their shattered crags and pinnacles tumble in ruinous heaps around.
Even this, however, is less dangerous than that time—to be spoken of by those who have seen it, and live, with bated breath—when, rotating like some wheel of the gods, the tropical cyclone whirls across the Indian seas. Round and round blow the incredibly furious winds, having a centrifugal direction withal, and yet the whole mighty system progresses in some given direction, until towards its centre there is a Maelstrom indeed—a space where the wind hath left, as it were, a funnel of calm in the world-tumult. And there the waves hold high revel. Heap upon heap the waters rise, without direction, without shape, save that of fortuitous blocks hurled skyward and falling again in ruin. The fountains of the great deep appear to be broken up, and woe to man’s handiwork found straying there in that black hour.
All those who have ever “run the Easting down” will remember, but not all pleasurably, the great true sea of the roaring “forties” or “fifties.” How, unhindered in its world-encircling sweep, the premier wind of all comes joyously, unwaveringly, for many a day without a pause, while the good ship flies before it with every wing bearing its utmost strain. In keeping with the wind, the wave—the long, true wave of the Southern Seas, spreading to infinity on either hand, a gorgeous concave of blue, with its direction as straightly at right angles to the ship’s track as if laid by line, and its ridge all glistening like a wreath of new-fallen snow under silver moon or golden sun. It pursues, it overtakes, rises astern with majestic sound as of all the war-chariots of Neptune; then, easily passing beneath the buoyant keel, it is gone on ahead, has joined its fellows in their stately progress to the East. Adown its far-spreading shoulders stream pennons of white; in the broad valley between it and the next wave the same bright foam creams and hisses until wherever the eye can rest is no longer blue but white—a wilderness of curdling snow just bepatched with azure.
The strong, exultant ship may rejoice in such a scene as this, but it is far otherwise with the weakling. Caught up in this irresistible march of wind and wave, she feels that her place is otherwhere; it is not hers to strive with giants, but to abide by the stuff. Then do the hapless mariners in charge watch carefully for a time when they may lay her to, watch the waves’ sequence, knowing that every third wave is greater, and leaves a broader valley of smooth behind it than its fellows; while some say that with the third sequence of three—the ninth wave—these differences are at their maximum. Why? Who knows? Certain it is that some waves are heavier than others, and equally certain it is that in the case of a truly running sea these heavier seas appear at regularly recurrent intervals of three. And that is all sailors know. Sufficient too, perhaps, as with their weak and overladen ship they watch the smooth, to swing her up between two rolling ranges of water, and without shipping more than thirty or forty tons or so, heave her to, her head just quartering the oncoming waves, and all danger of being overwhelmed by them removed.